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EU reviews innovation standing

A fascinating insight into national research and innovation performances in the EU and internationally is provided in the recent Innovation Union Scoreboard for 2010, published by Inno Metrics, part of the European Commission’s DG Enterprise and Industry.

The report shows, amongst other things, that in global terms, the EU’s 27 members states are rapidly losing their lead in innovation over China and Brazil – two rapidly industrialising nations with high economic growth.

It also shows the US and Japan are holding their lead over the EU27, but that the EU27 are holding their lead over India and Russia. The results will not be pleasing reading to the EU bureaucrats who have high hopes for their Europe 2020 Innovation Union initiative, launched in mid-2010.

Within the EU 27, the Scoreboard shows leading innovators are Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Germany, with the UK just scraping in in fifth place.

The IUS 2010 groups EU member states into four performance groups, based on average innovation performance across 24 indicators.